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Natural Science Museum, Turin

Natural Science Museum, Turin

The Natural Science Museum in Turin (Museo Regionali di Scienze Naturali) is a huge exhibition area where you can get acquainted with many features of animate and inanimate nature. Museum collection is of particular interest  for children who want know more about the world. And adults will not be bored here, because some of the exhibits of the museum will surprise even sophisticated connoisseurs.

History of the museum

The museum is located in the building of the former San Giovanni Battista hospital, created in the Baroque style. The first stones of the foundation of the building were laid on August 5, 1680 by the patron of Giovanni Battista. The construction was carried out by the architect Amedeo di Castellamonte. The plan of the building is similar to the other hospitals of the 14-16th centuries in Milan and Como: it is a Greek cross inscribed in a rectangular outer perimeter. It is a two-story palace, on the first floor there was a male infirmary, on the second there was a female hospital. The roof of the building was crowned with a dome. The façade is quite simple, there are repeating decorative reliefs between the windows of the floors. The interior of the building corresponds to the Baroque style of the façade. In 1721, a monumental staircase was completed inside. In 1767 the construction of the church at the hospital was completed.

In 1978, the city authorities signed a decree on the establishment of the museum in part of the hospital building. The clinic still operates in the smaller southern part. In 1980, an agreement was reached with the University of Turin to deliver its collections of natural sciences to the museum. The museum started to create its own collection and conduct scientific research. In 1989, a botanical garden was added to his structure for further work.

In 2012, the museum stopped the work on the botanical garden. Since 2013, the museum's rooms have been undergoing restoration work, from time to time there are temporary exhibitions and a mobile museum.

Collections of the museum

The museum has a huge area of 22,000 square meters on which it can function. 7,300 of them are exhibition spaces. The museum has a library with a collection of 19,000 volumes and 1,250 periodicals. The museum's aim is not only to preserve and display natural samples, but also to study and further disseminate the accumulated knowledge about the nature of our planet. The entire collection of the museum is divided into 5 parts in accordance with the natural classification.

  1. Botanics. In 1983 the museum started to accumulate the collection of flora, and today it has more than 85,000 samples. There are 3 sections among them. This herbarium, that is, dried plants, living plants cultivated to create scientific and educational routes, as well as a collection of images (from pictures on paper to modern 3D models).
  2. Entomology. A huge collection of insects has been painstakingly collected in different years by many private collectors, and also it includes the former exposition of the University of Turin. In total, it has almost 200,000 copies.
  3. Zoology. In this collection there are the specimens collected by the oldest museums in the region and by private collectors. The age of some collections reaches the 18th century. Here, there are samples of all classes of wildlife, including 37,000 specimens of reptiles and 18,000 fish samples.
  4. Mineralogy and geology. The collection contains a huge amount of minerals and rocks, a special place is occupied by the representatives of the Apennines.
  5. Paleontology. Here you can see more than 300 samples of fossil animals. Among them, the skeleton of a dinosaur found in Argentina is the pride of the museum.

The museum has educational programs for schools. And at the beginning of the 21st century, with the growth of technology, the "Experimenta" department was opened here. These are interactive exhibitions, designed in an easy way to explain the complexity of natural processes.

How to get there

The museum is located in the administrative center of Turin, on Via Giovanni Giolitti, 36. In a block there are the palaces of Coardi of Carpenetto and Costa Carru. And in 10 minutes you can walk to the embankment of the Po river, where the monument to Garibaldi is erected. There is the Giolitti stop near the museum. It can be reached by buses № 6, 18, 61, 68, S05, S18, STAR2.

Opening hours: as of April 2018, the museum is closed for restoration. To find out information about temporary exhibitions, you can call (+39) 800 329329.

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